Red states would rather let a patient die than let her terminate a dangerous pregnancy. And they’re barely pretending otherwise.

Red states would rather let a patient die than let her terminate a dangerous pregnancy. And they’re barely pretending otherwise.

For many years before S.B. 8 passed in Texas and was then swept into existence by the Supreme Court, and before Dobbs ushered in a more formal regime of forced childbirth six months later, the groups leading the charge against reproductive rights liked to claim that they loved pregnant women and only wanted them to be safe and cozy, stuffed chock-full of good advice and carted around through extra-wide hallways for safe, sterile procedures in operating rooms with only the best HVAC systems.

Then Dobbs came down and within minutes it became manifestly clear that these advocates actually viewed pregnant people as the problem standing in the way of imaginary, healthy babies—and that states willing to privilege fetal life would go to any and all lengths to ensure that actual patients’ care, comfort, informed consent, and very survival would be subordinate.

We are only beginning to understand the extent to which pregnant women are dying and will continue to die due to denials of basic maternal health care, candid medical advice, and adequate treatment.

  • BearFats@lemmy.world
    116·
    10 months ago

    In 2021, only 1200 women died during birth. In the same year, 626,000 babies were legally aborted. I mean…even if we reduce the abortion by 1%, we’d have more babies than maternal deaths.

    • Doc Avid Mornington@midwest.socialEnglish
      10·
      10 months ago

      No baby was aborted, ever, by definition.

      Pregnancies are aborted.

      Aborting a pregnancy involves destroying a blastocyst or embryo, in most cases.

      At no point is a baby involved.

      But I’ll bet that some actual children who were orphaned when those 1200 women died wound up dying as well.

      • BearFats@lemmy.world
        112·
        10 months ago

        Depends on your interpretation i suppose. But lets go with yours. Those pregnancies still had the potential to be over a half million babies.

        New here, but I can’t see the original comment, I think it mentioned Republicans don’t want more babies. If they’re pushing for banning abortions, that would mean more babies, or at least less promiscuity.

        • TechyDad@lemmy.world
          3·
          10 months ago

          In many of the cases that Republicans refuse abortions for, there is no baby at the end. If a woman is at risk of dying and the fetus has such severe abnormalities that it will breathe twice and die, then what’s the argument against an abortion? It could save the woman’s life and wouldn’t “kill a baby” (even if I accepted that abortion killed a baby - which I don’t).

          But the Republican line seems to be that a woman needs to be actively dying before they’ll even start to consider allowing her to have a life saving medical procedure.

        • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
          3·
          10 months ago

          Ah yes the “less promiscuity” angle. Ever enjoy a relationship even a marriage with a partner of the opposite sex? What happens to most hetero relationships when you stop having sex? Women even in commited monogamous partnerships generally already have to weigh the risks but now you have gynecologists fleeing red states or choosing not to go into the specialty , emergency rooms refusing to help you if you’re pregnant, the possibility of becoming a living coffin for months knowing what comes out will never be a living child and the automatic choice that if a delivery goes wrong you will always be discarded like trash in favor of the baby no matter what the chances are.

          Meanwhile if you have any debilitating conditions that mean chronic pain or any life threatening conditions that arise from a reproductive system gone wrong you’re just SOL because who wants to go into a specialty where you have to stand back and watch your paitents die in excruciating pain because you court a prison sentence if you try and save them.

          You are basically advocating for dead and dying marriages or dead and dying women. All for what? Children that will be resented their entire lives as burdens unwillingly foisted on their parents by the state? No. It’s time to go back to your bible and realize your purity doctrine is all sourced from the one sex repulsed asexual guy in love with telling people what to do who fell off a horse and hit his head on a rock and hallucinated Jesus because he never actually met him in real life and just get over the fact that humans have sex.

          • BearFats@lemmy.world
            11·
            10 months ago

            I’m not for outlawing abortion, especially in cases where the mothers health is at risk. But banning abortion tends to lead in the direction of a positive birthrate, even though there should be exceptions.

            Also the part where you mention kids resenting their parents? Maybe there needs to be a culture shift in America where folks focus more on the future and having kids instead of just self pleasure.

            Any long lasting society depends on the back breaking work of parents to raise the next generation, to pass on their values and traditions.

            • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
              1·
              10 months ago

              No one woud thank you for it. There’s plenty that could be done to lower the bar for people to embrace being a parent but it’s instinctual to not bring offspring into the world when you are facing precarity. A lot of mammals will outright murder their offspring if they don’t like their chances. Not enough resources and way too much stress and perceived danger is a recipe for instinctual abandonment. Once a society sees something like that too often it gets callous. A future where you force people into greater precarity isn’t the answer and adoption isn’t much of a solution. The mental trauma from adoption has known long term effects that tend to make mothers of unwanted children who opt for that genuinely less resilient in other spheres. Flooding the system with children there are no resources to bring up well also exacerbates issues of community wide antisocial problems, mental and physical illnesses. It is far better to allow individuals and families to make their own judgements about what they are capable of doing.

              You want a culture shift, eliminate precarity. Social safety nets, good community resources, affordable housing, family sustaining wages that allow enough time and energy to be alloted to childcare. We are in a situation where the future is pretty much looking like doom and drudgery with little relief in sight. Nobody has retirement savings anymore, climate change is visible, lots of people are only a bad month away from being homeless and jobs are getting less rewarding as we go on and rates of burnout are skyrocketing. Now is not the time to add more babies into that mix, people will go literally fucking insane and historically speaking desperation and actual not-a-fetus infantcide are real good friends